We know there are Broadway fans who engage with social media. With this survey we know there are Broadway ticket buyers on Telecharge who have used social media for Broadway (or at least seen a post in their newsfeed). But how old are they? How close are they to the average age of Broadway attendees? We thought it would be interesting to learn more about how old they are so we matched the answers against our database. Big data in action.

What did we learn? It should come as no surprise that those who answered yes to any of the social media questions were younger than those who answered no; that applied both to multi-buyers and those with only one purchase in the file. Those who answered no were also older than the average age of the Telecharge Broadway ticket buyer. The age of the yes respondents varied and was much closer to the average for all Telecharge Broadway ticket buyers. The yes customers in most cases had fewer shows in their record than those who answered no (but then again the respondents who answered no were older).

The difference in age between those who had not engaged with Facebook for Broadway, and those who had in one way or another (seen a posting in their newsfeed on Facebook, visited a show’s Facebook page or posted about their Broadway experience on their own Facebook page), was 7-8 years. The average age of those who had not engaged with Facebook for Broadway was 60.

When just looking at those who only had one show in their history, the age difference between those who said yes and those who said no for all three questions was 6-8 years, with the average age of those who said no being 56.

The data on multi-buyers was about the same except that the average age of those who said no was 61-62.

Twitter usage skewed younger with a greater spread between those who answered yes to seeing a tweet and those who said no. The customers who answered averaged 48 and they were 10.5 years older than those who had not.

For comparison the average age of Telecharge Broadway buyers is 52.5 with musical buyers averaging 51.7 and play goers 55.5.

The results are encouraging. While those who answered yes were on average younger than those who answered no, we are still seeing people in their mid-late 40’s and early 50’s engaging with Broadway on social media.

For those who love data, here are a few more data points.

The average age in NYC was a bit lower than those from out of town with the suburban customers coming in oldest of all three.

The suburban Wednesday Matinee customers who did engage with Facebook were 6-7 years older on average than the other groups. The difference was not as much for NYC and out of town Wednesday Matinee customers.

The youngest average ages belonged to NYC residents answering yes to a question regarding the use of Facebook: 46 for those had visited a show’s Facebook page, 49 for those who had seen a posting in their newsfeed and 48 for those who has written on their own Facebook page about a Broadway experience. For Twitter it was the average age for NYC respondents was 44.

Posted by Brian Mahoney, Vice President – Ticket SalesThis is part 2 of the information on social media usage we obtained from the last survey.With five questions on social media, spreading it over multiple posts made sense so no one’s eyes glazed over.Twitter reach and usage for Broadway is much lower than for Facebook – at least among Telecharge ticket buyers.

We asked “Have you ever received a tweet about a Broadway show”; 11% said yes.Twitter reach for Telecharge buyers was light in the suburbs (8%) and heavier in NYC and amongst out of town customers (both13%) but still not very high.

As for sending tweets, only 10% of Telecharge customers had: 6% of the suburban respondents and 11% of out of town and NYC customers.

Almost twice as many NYC and out of town customers sent a tweet about a show as suburban customers.

Comparing Twitter to Facebook, Telecharge customers reported that posts in a Facebook newsfeed reached 4 times as many people as tweets about a show (and 4 times as many people posted about a show on their Facebook page as sent a tweet about a show).Telecharge customers were slightly less inclined to write on their own Facebook page about a show (either their experience at a show or their plans to see a show) – 36% - than their friends or relatives whose Broadway experiences showed up in their newsfeed – 44%.The next post on social media will include data on average age of those who use (and don’t use) social media.

We love social media.It’s cheap, it’s fun.Everyone has a good time talking about the social activity we generate as well as what people are saying in posts and tweets, not to mention how many likes and followers there are.The raw numbers of likes and followers provide comfort that the show has a strong fan base who will buy tickets.The posts provide a lift as well in the form of positive feedback from the fan base.Everything is coming up Roses.But are we reaching today’s ticket buyers?Who is engaging with social media for Broadway?

We asked five questions about the use of social media.The first - and possibly the most important- was “Have you ever seen a post in your newsfeed on Facebook about a Broadway show either from the show, or a family member or friend?”44% said yes, with fewer New Yorkers saying yes (41%) than out of town customers (45%).The Wednesday Matinee customers posted the lowest percentages: 35% NYC, 37% suburbs and 38% out of town.The highest percentages were posted by the second year customers, not a large sample (1,200) as compared to the total but still significant: 47% NYC, 42% suburbs and 52% out of town.

We also asked “Have you ever visited a show’s Facebook page?”27% said yes, with a range between 23% in the suburbs and 31% out of town, with NYC at 24%.Once again the Wednesday matinee customers were not heavy users of Broadway show Facebook pages: 27% of the out of town respondents but only 20% of locals (both New Yorkers and those who live in the suburbs).Then we asked those who said they had visited a show’s Facebook page if they had “liked” the show on Facebook: 78% of those who had visited a show’s webpage said they had “liked” the show on Facebook (for the statisticians reading this that is 78% of the 27%).

There are some interesting takeaways in this data.50% more customers saw a post in their newsfeed than visited a show’s Facebook page.Are most of those posts from when their friends or family saw the show?Is this a form of “word of mouth”?This suggests the payoff to a show in Facebook activity is greater from the number of posts made by customers in their own feeds than it is from the number of “likes” or visits to the page.For a potential customer to know about likes they have to visit the show’s Facebook page (or at least the page of a friend or family member who had “liked” the show), which requires both a decision to visit and the action of visiting whereas a posting that appears in your newsfeed requires virtually no work.You have to be active with one and you can be passive with the other.At the same time the low usage by our loyal Wednesday Matinee crowd suggests social media is still used by younger audiences, or at least younger by Broadway standards (or Wednesday matinee standards).

Encouraging posts from people who have seen the show is an activity that could pay dividends.With all the problems with ringing cell phone usage (not to mention trying to charge the phones when on low battery), how to generate posts around attendance without creating more problems may be challenging.